


Death Do Us Part

by ddynoliaeth



Series: Death!Ianto Universe [1]
Category: Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, COE Fixit, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Children of Earth Compliant, Children of Earth Fix-It, Countrycide angst, Death!Ianto Jones, Fluff, Gwen Bashing, Immortal Ianto Jones, Mild Gwen bashing so far if you squint (all canon actions), Multi, Post-Canon, non-explicit non-con/rape
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-03
Updated: 2016-04-24
Packaged: 2018-05-11 09:42:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5622751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ddynoliaeth/pseuds/ddynoliaeth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Team Torchwood is often thrown off its axis due to interrelationships of team members, but when Ianto Jones and Jack Harkness get together the entire world is in for a wild ride. Especially when Ianto is keeping a secret from the Captain, one far worse than keeping an ex-girlfriend cyberwoman in their basement. This may be the one Jack has been waiting his entire, long, long life, and he will do anything to keep him - short of actually telling him. These two have never been too good at communication.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Battle of Canary Wharf

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my betas [redshirtlondon](http://archiveofourown.org/users/redshirtlondon) and [furyofthetimelords](http://archiveofourown.org/users/furyofthetimelords/pseuds/furyofthetimelords)!!
> 
> If you like this please consider commissioning me to write some fic for you!  
> http://vincenoir.tumblr.com/post/161648060242/hey-so-im-severely-strapped-for-cash-at-the

Ianto Jones is a man who loves quietly, fiercely, and with such honesty and emotional sincerity that the object of these affections must be a special kind of monster to ever think themselves worthy of such. He is also a man of quite perverse sexual appetites, but he is currently unaware of them as he is comfortably in a very vanilla relationship with one Lisa Hallett, with whom he works at the Torchwood One Institute in the department of administration. Not the most exciting of workplaces. This morning he is sixteen seconds late for work, which may be the deciding factor in his survival today, although probably not. 

"Look who's late."

 

"Late seems to be a bit of a stretch," Ianto replies, passing by Lisa's desk and smiling at her. He does not do public displays of affection, especially not while on the job, not while he is supposed to be collating data or running diagnostics or any of the other myriad of things his job entails. Ianto Jones is a man who keeps himself professional in the workplace. 

 

Lisa, on the other hand, is a woman who prides herself on her emotional honesty. While she knows it makes her boyfriend uncomfortable, she stands and places a peck on his lips irregardless. Ianto frowns, but says nothing.

 

"I need the files on last month's expenditure as soon as you can," she says, waving him off as she resumes her station. Ianto smiles softly as he leaves her cubicle, moving down the rows to the break room to fix himself a morning coffee. If there is anything Ianto Jones is good at, it is coffee.

 

The break room is mostly empty at this time of morning; only one man stands in the room, fiddling with the coffee machine in frustration. It's Billy, from human resources, a man with the emotional range of a toothpick and the empathy of a dead cat. Not a man particularly suited to a job that requires dealing with and aiding emotional employees with complaints they have blown out of proportion, but Billy does try, much like he does try to make coffee: badly and with unnecessary anger.

 

"Give us a hand here, will you, Ianto? I can't get this fucking thing to work," Billy growls, glancing at Ianto from where his head is so far underneath the nozzle he may as well be inside the machine. Ianto sighs, but elbows Billy out of his way and sets to work on fixing whatever he's done to the poor thing.

 

"So, how's the whole thing with Lisa going?" Billy asks. He is skeptical of Ianto's ability to keep a girl like Lisa, gorgeous as she is, and while he thinks Ianto's a top bloke and all, he's been waiting to jump on that for years. On the other hand, if their relationship does go down the shitter, that means more paperwork for him and Billy has never really been one for doing a whole lot of work.

 

"Fine. We're talking about moving in together," Ianto replies, filling the filter with coffee grounds. Torchwood One never thinks it's necessary to buy unground coffee, reasoning to the frustrated Jones that the time he would take to grind his own could be better spent doing his job. This excuse doesn't fly, but Ianto knows better than to fight his higher ups on the matter.

 

Billy, at once both relieved and disappointed, nods and offers to finish the coffee. Ianto waves him off, placing two mugs underneath the filter and switching the machine on. He turns.

 

"How's it that a man who builds robot fighters in his spare time is unable to get a simple coffee machine to work?"

 

"It hates me, I'm sure of it," Billy growls, scowling at the machine. "Either that, or it just loves you so much nobody else can use it." 

 

"It's probably that," Ianto says, turning back to froth the milk. He hands one cup to Billy, warm with a matching smile, and takes the other to his desk, placing it on the cool wood. He straightens his pressed suit jacket before sitting, slotting his briefcase underneath the desk beside the drawers. This is a morning like all mornings, with the bag sitting where it does every day, a steaming mug of delectable coffee, and Ianto's fingers flying over the keyboard of the old Dell computer as he logs in. There is nothing special about this morning.

\----

Jack Harkness is a man of perverse sexual appetites. There are only a few things he has not tried in his incredibly long life, most due to physical impossibility, but some for reasons he himself cannot describe. In truth, they remain unattempted as he has yet to find a partner whom he trusts and adores enough to do these things. Unbeknownst to him, Jack Harkness is actually a man who cares deeply, loves strongly, and has the capacity to fall so deeply in love that he could not see a future in which he loves any other. It is, perhaps, a good thing Jack is unaware of this, as the realisation is one that could emotionally ruin him, destroy him so deeply that he would avoid emotional intimacy for fear of finding any one person with the power to make him love them until the end of his days. Besides, in his line of work, one can rarely find the time to pursue romantic relationships. 

“Jack, incoming, on your left!”

“Got it, Owen, just let me-” The breath is knocked out of Jack as the weevil slams into his left side; they hit the ground in a scramble of limbs and firearms and teeth. He can hear the shouts of his team in his earpiece over the growling and laboured breath of the weevil on top of him, can hear the shots of their guns. 

“Damn it, Suzie, don’t shoot! You’ll hit him!”

“It’ll kill him anyway, Owen!”

“Shut up both of you!” Jack shouts, wrestling the weevil from his body and shooting it square in the chest. Catching his breath, he turns to his team, the doctor and the soldier standing over him in a similar state. He stands, realises his leg has been injured in the tussle - either by the weevil’s claws or a stray bullet - and steels himself against the pain, showing none of it on his face.

“You shoot,” he says. “I’m being attacked, you don’t know if I’ll live, you shoot, no matter the risk to me. Our priority is protecting this city.”

Owen opens his mouth to object, but Jack has already swept away through the alleyway towards the exit, looking for the SUV. Owen glances at Suzie, who is grinning at him, smug in Jack’s support. Owen scowls, stomping off after his captain, hands in his pockets and head hung low. Suzie follows, stowing her gun in the holster on her hip. She is in the good books tonight.

Surrounded by the cement decor of the Hub, Owen heaves the corpse of the weevil through the main floor and down into the furnaces. Jack follows behind, not lending a hand, but instead watching as Owen struggles. His punishment for what Jack views as a miscalculation. He does not take it without complaint.

“Why don’t we have a lackey to do this sort of shit?”

“What, like a butler?” Jack asks, amused.

“Why not? We’ve both got better shit to do than this.”

Jack shakes his head, opening the furnace. He doesn’t reply, but the idea rolls around in his mind, and lodges itself in the forefront. 

\---- 

Everything is burning. The world is burning. Pain is all he can feel, everything he can think, and somewhere, somehow, in the middle of that hurricane of sensation, he hears her crying out for him, a tiny spark that grows and grows and overthrows the fire that burns without him, replacing it with one inside that screams “save her, save her, save her!”

Ianto forces his eyes open, stares at the ceiling of the break room, and asks himself what that smell is. He glances along his prone form, and realises with a soft pang of distress that it’s his trouser cuff, burning. That explains that. Dimly, he thinks he should be more worried about this, rather than calmly patting at the smoldering fabric. He's probably in shock. He doesn't remember how he got here, why he's here, in this room, why he was on fire. But he's not particularly worried.

Until he registers the screaming.

It's all around him, boxing him in, clawing at his ears and pulling him from the ground. He's wobbly, he's dizzy, and he's determined to figure out exactly what the fuck is happening. He takes a shuffling step forward. He nearly collapses, but catches himself on the break room table. He squeezes his eyes closed, opens them, and comes to the conclusion that the world isn't going to stop spinning any time soon. The screams don't stop. 

He makes it out of the break room, can still smell the stench of smoke. It's coming from the direction of the bay of cubicles he works in, so he pulls himself along the wall in the opposite direction, towards the bay Lisa works in. It's surrounded by plastic sheeting, and the screams are louder here. Flashing lights dance behind the sheets, mechanical buzzing underscores the human devastation cutting through the air. He feels sick, and not just from the way his head is spinning.

Behind the sheets, the smell of smoke shifts to the stench of burning flesh. It's rancid, sharp, it's an assault in every sense of the word. It cuts deep into Ianto's soul, and he physically feels it in his stomach. Or that may just be the nausea that comes with smelling the actual body of another human being burnt. Ianto can't say: he's never had to distinguish the two before.

He actually does vomit when he sees what’s waiting for him.

It’s her. Her screams filling his head, her body burning, and her new part-mechanical form grinding and whirring as the monster above-around-inside her builds her over again. His throat stings, his eyes overflow, his limbs move of their own accord and pull at the cords, the thick slabs of metal violating her. It takes time, too long maybe, but eventually he frees her. Blood courses down his arms, soaks his hands, and he notices from a distance that it isn’t only hers, but his own, too. His hands are covered in deep cuts, seared and scored by the hot metal of the conversion unit. She’s stopped screaming, passed out or dead from the shock of being removed. His screams replace them.

“No, please God, no! Somebody help us! Help us!”

Desperation.

Fear.

He falls.

A sharp pain in his chest, a blossom of blood, and blackness.

He awakes some time later.Everything is quiet, dark. There are no sounds in the distance, nobody screaming as he had. Lisa lies still in his arms, not quite gone yet. He knows any normal man would have died; the warped iron rod pierced right through his heart. Gingerly, he lifts himself from it, wincing at the sickening squelch. He hears footsteps.

“Oh Jesus Christ.”

Billy from HR drops to a knee beside him, concern flitting across his face, chased away by relief as he registers that Ianto seems unhurt, merely soaked in blood. He turns to Lisa, and visibly recoils.

“Oh God, Ianto, I’m so sorry,” he whispers, touching the little amount of skin still on her face. He closes his eyes, willing down the revulsion and tears, for Ianto’s sake. 

“You have to help us,” Ianto says.

“Nothing I can do.”

“She’s still alive.”

Billy’s eyes burst open, looking to Ianto and blown wide in desperate fear. He knows what the Cybermen did, saw the destruction they caused. He has the unshakable urge to wrap his hand around Lisa’s throat and squeeze until he feels the last shred of life leave her body. But the look on Ianto’s face stops him.

“You have to help me.”

\----

It’s a little over a month later when Ianto is hired at Torchwood Three. Billy helped him design and build the life support system for Lisa, helped him smuggle the unit into the Hub while the team was out on call, and cut all ties with them, claiming trauma as his excuse. They both knew he was actually just frightened of Lisa, but neither mentioned it as he left the Hub. Ianto felt too grateful to call Billy out on his lie, and resolved to let him live out his life without fear of the Cybermen. 

The charismatic captain of Torchwood Three had already asserted himself as a distraction to his cause. At the beginning, the flirting had seemed like an easy way to keep him off his guard while Ianto used his basement to resurrect his nearly lost girlfriend. But after the first meeting, Ianto couldn’t shake the attraction he felt towards Jack: an attraction that has not subsided since beginning work.

\----

_“Okay, that is the only special equipment you’ve got?”_

_Jack pauses with the hypodermic needle poised in his hands, glances back at Ianto from inside the boot of the SUV._

_“Yeah, because I keep dinosaur nets in the back of the SUV.”_

_“Torchwood London would’ve.”_

_Jack pushes past him, opens the door to the warehouse. The pterodactyl shrieks as she dives towards them-_

_“Nope,” Ianto says, shutting the door in her face._

_“How did you find it?”_

_“Rift activity locator,” Ianto replies, feeling his stomach do a tiny flip at the impressed note in Jack’s voice. “Torchwood London. See? Quality kit.”_

_“Yeah, it’s quite excitable,” Jack says, grinning._

_“Must be your aftershave.”_

_“Never wear any.”_

_“You smell like that naturally?” Now it’s Ianto’s turn to be impressed, turning to Jack with a newfound appreciation for the fact that this man could shake him so much, especially without any chemical help besides his own natural musk._

_“Fifty-first century pheromones. You people have no idea.” Ianto feels a shiver go through his body, is about to ask what he meant by the whole ‘fifty-first century bit’, but Jack beats him to it. “Ready for another go?”_

_“I’m game if you are.”_

_“Three, two, one… Split up!” They fling the door open, race around the pterodactyl in opposite directions, approach her slowly from the front as she settles, wary, on the ground in front of the door._

_“We’re not gonna harm you,” Jack says, a calming lilt to his voice as he smiles at the dinosaur. “You can’t stay here. Come back with me; I’ve got somewhere nice and big where you can fly around.”_

_“Okay, so you’ll let the pterodactyl in but not me?” Ianto whispers, aggressive but not rude._

_“We need a guard dog,” Jack replies, rude._

_“I can be that. Like a receptionist, building maintenance, food and drink. Dry cleaning, even. That coat of yours must take a battering.” Don’t think of what sorts of stains you want to add to it. “Like a butler, I could be a butler.”_

_“We don’t need a butler.” They need a butler._

_“Excuse me, dried egg on your collar,” Ianto growls._

_“It was a busy week.”_

_“What, exactly, is your plan?”_

_“I’m going to be the decoy.”_

_“And it will rip you to shreds.” Can’t have it. Safer for Ianto to do it, ripped to shreds is something he’s survived many times, once in the last month. Something he’ll survive many times more._

_“Dinosaurs? Had ‘em for breakfast. Had to: only source of pre-killed food protein after the asteroid crashed.” Ianto gives him a disbelieving side glance. “Long story. Here you go.” He shoves the hypodermic needle at Ianto’s chest. “One injection to the central nervous cortex. I’ll keep it occupied. Move.”_

_“No.”_

_“What?” He’s not used to being so abruptly disobeyed in high stakes environments. He finds he feels a slight thrill at it, underneath the annoyance. Doesn’t hurt that Ianto is so attractive. The needle is shoved back at him._

_“It knows me. I’ll be a better decoy.”_

_“Way too dangerous.” What, now you give a shit, Jack? Five minutes ago you were threatening his life with your shitty driving. That’s more than even a pretty pair of eyes can achieve - although, they are very pretty._

_“No, I’ve got a secret weapon. Chocolate: preferably dark.” He waves the bar in Jack’s face, moves towards the pterodactyl in an assured way that leaves no room for more discussion. Jack shuffles around to approach her from the back._

_“I got your favourite, yeah,” Ianto cajoles, tossing the bar to her. “It’s good for your serotonin levels. If you’ve got serotonin levels.”_

_Jack must have done something wrong, because she’s spooked and takes off. He launches himself at her, catching her leg, brought along for the ride as she soars through the warehouse._

_“Whoa! Ianto!”_

_He injects her, drops to the ground. But instead of the hard concrete floor, he hits something soft, something that says ‘oof’. He looks down at Ianto underneath him, feels blood rushing southward at the sight of his flushed face._

_“Sorry.”_

_Ianto grabs his shoulders, forces him to roll to the left as the pterodactyl collapses out of the sky right where they’d been lying. Ianto ends up on top, the two laughing until they lock eyes. They are really very pretty eyes, Jack thinks, staring up with his mouth only centimetres from Ianto’s._

_This is wrong, Ianto thinks. He’s in love with Lisa, that’s what this has all been for, saving her, escaping with her, loving her. But looking at Jack now, laid out beneath him and his hands gripping his upper arms tight, Ianto can’t help but feel the stirrings of attraction, arousal, and maybe something a little more emotional and raw._

_“I should go,” he says, heaving himself up and walking away, tears filling his eyes as the feeling of having betrayed Lisa wells up inside him, warring with the confusion over Jack._

_“Hey,” Jack says, straightening. “Report for work first thing tomorrow. Like the suit, by the way.” The tears fall._

_For reasons other than the ones he tells himself - flirt, it’ll keep him off your scent. He arrives at work the next morning in a clean and pressed three-piece suit, and every day afterwards._

\----

Ianto emerges from the lower levels of the Hub, having just administered another dose of painkillers to Lisa in the basement. He’s been here for three months now, pottering around after the field members of the team, cleaning what is honestly the filthiest place he’s ever seen. It’s taken him this long to just get the top level under control; his next self-assigned task is the lower level archives of Torchwood-requisitioned alien wares and personnel documents. Suzie gives him an odd look from her workstation where she is pouring herself over some kind of ceremonial knife, but says nothing. Keeps to herself, that Suzie. Ianto can sympathise. Jack appears like a ghost in front of him, atop the stairs, a small grin on his face.

“We have a situation.”


	2. The Wheels Keep Turning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From Everything Changes to Ghost Machine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So my friends and I met Gareth David-Lloyd last week and my friend told him about the concept of this fic and he said that it was actually a really great idea so that's a thing this fic is kind of endorsed by Ianto Jones himself. Enjoy that little tidbit of information.

Gwen Cooper is, if nothing else, a woman of resources, although said resources are often those of the police force and not merely her own, and often not particularly impressive, or even believable. For example, right now she stands awkwardly in front of the tourist office that serves as Torchwood Three's front, holding a pile of pizza boxes and sticking out like a sore thumb. Conspicuous does not even begin to cover it.

The door buzzes, opens on its own. Gwen doesn't have the self-preservation skills to worry too much about it, strange as it is, and pushes her way through. Inside is what looks like your average tourist office, if more meticulously kept than usual. Stands with brochures line the walls, posters of maps of the bay and surrounding areas, even some fishing paraphernalia that look like they haven't been used in decades. It all seems a little too normal to her. 

A man emerges from the office behind the counter, beads from the door jangling in his wake.

He's not the sort of man Gwen goes for. He's prim, proper, dressed in a clean cut and tailored suit - a little dressed up for his job, if you asked her. His face is filled like a boy's. Gwen usually prefers the ruggedly handsome type: although her Rhys at home may not quite fit this archetype, he at least has the decency to look his age. She can't even begin to guess how old this straight laced boy is.

“Oh, hiya? Sorry I'm late, someone ordered pizza?” Great one, Gwen. Way to sound like a professional. The outfit probably isn't helping, either. How many pizza delivery girls can afford these clothes?

“Who's it for?” the man asks, and wow, yeah, that's all man right there. Deep vowels like that only come with some particularly devastating years in puberty.

“I think it's a Mister Harkness?”

The door behind her slams shut. Another buzz, and the wall to Gwen’s right swings away from her, into a dimly lit corridor. She can feel the cold of a massive chamber clambering up through the hall, a sharp difference to the warmth of the office. She glances at the man in the suit, trying not to let her worry show.

“Don't keep them waiting,” he says, an edge to his voice that she can't quite place, but might be mockery. She steels herself against it, and decides that she definitely does not like this boy-faced man with the deep voice. She turns and heads into the corridor.

\----

Ianto watches the police constable head into the depths of the Hub with a smug kind of satisfaction. He hadn't missed any of the subtle hints that Gwen immediately saw him how his team did - as a pretty face to deliver coffee and little else. It doesn't faze him to know that everyone he works with - and even those he doesn't - view him with little regard. Really, it makes his role here at Torchwood Three easy, makes it even easier to lie to them as he keeps Lisa clinging to the last threads of her life in their basement. It's less effortless when it comes to Jack, although he is just as dismissive as the rest of them.

Ianto decides to ignore those particular feelings.

Jack has already given Gwen the tour when he arrives on the Hub floor, ostensibly to greet the officer as the Captain had planned, but with the knowledge that the rest of the team will be clambering for coffee as soon as he whisks her off to retcon her. Ianto tries not to feel cheated that he's overlooked to administer the retcon - it is, after all, usually his job - as he tidies the coffee table by the couch. 

“-and this is Ianto Jones. Ianto cleans up after us and gets us everywhere on time.”

You have no idea how desperately you need my services, Captain. “I try my best.” 

“And he looks good in a suit,” Jack adds, turning his trademark dazzling grin towards him. Ianto forces himself to keep his thudding heartbeat under control, as he always has to whenever Jack smiles at him.

“Careful,” he says. “That's harassment, sir.” He can see Jack is unaffected by his flirting, which is definitely a good thing as every single time it happens Ianto does not mean it to. But Jack always flirts, and not with anyone else on the team, and it makes Ianto feel special in a way he both desperately loathes and loves in equal measures. He tells himself that his reciprocation is to keep Jack placid, off the scent of Lisa, but every time there's a jolt, a sting of electricity, that tells him in some dark, secret part of his soul that he enjoys it. He smiles as he speaks. Jack's smirk widens, just for a moment, just for him. The secret part of his soul takes that smirk and hides it deep down, protects it, cradles it, calls it something akin to pure and good. Ianto is happy for a split second, which is more than he can say for his times with Lisa since Canary Wharf. The secret feeds.

“Owen, first thing, get a hold of Chandler and Bell, ‘cause I think they're lying. Ianto, if he needs back up, then you'd better be on stand by,” Jack calls, leading Gwen away and continuing with his instructions for Suzie. Ianto nods, knows that this is code for “if the constable writes anything down, be ready to interfere”. When the time comes, he does, and is glad for it. The dark place inside him nurses Jack's smirk and sneers at Gwen, a twisted sense of ownership over Jack's flirting triumphant as he removes the threat to his affections. It doesn't last.

When Jack returns later that night to find Ianto still tapping away at a keyboard, he says nothing, merely pats him on the shoulder. Ianto's lips thin, and he allows himself to scowl for a moment before schooling his features. He turns to Jack.

“Is there anything else you'd like me to do for you before I leave, sir?”

Jack looks for a moment like he might say something else, but settles on; “No, thanks, Ianto. Go home and get a good night's sleep.” 

Ianto feels almost disappointed.

Jack hires Gwen, Suzie is dead, and the team takes no time to grieve. In these moments, Ianto hates Jack, hates Torchwood. Hates himself. She may have been a murderer, but she was their friend and coworker, too. There is still loss. In Suzie’s betrayal the seed of doubt lodges itself in his mind, dancing a strange dance of emotional destruction with the part of his soul reserved for Jack's smiles, tells him his love for Lisa is a betrayal itself. He spends more time with her in the coming weeks, reminding himself where his loyalties lie. When Jack smirks at him, his strength falters. It betrays the woman he loves. He feels too much.

\----

Jack admits there's an attraction there, granted, but it's not the reason he hires Gwen. He believes her life, her dedication to good, will truly bring the team together. When, on her first mission, she immediately releases an alien threat, Jack wonders if he's made a mistake compromising on skill for heart. He wishes, not for the first time, that he had someone to confide in in these moments. 

\----

“So, who’s for Chinese?”

The team congregates in the meeting room upstairs, Ianto sits opposite Tosh, beside Jack - damn those pheromones - and tucks a napkin into his collar. Moments like these he likes to pretend he's a normal person, having a normal lunch with his normal colleagues, and not a man hiding a double life and cyber-girlfriend from his most trusted friends - if he can even call them that with what he does to them every moment of the day. He digs in.

“... and she said, if I'd known what he was, I never would have married him!” Jack exclaims to joyed laughter.

“She knew. She knew all along,” Tosh says through giggles and Chinese food. 

“And she didn't care,” Owen adds.

“Until he started leaving black piles of mucus in the bathtub.” Ianto can relate, a little. There are times when he feels like he can't take being with Lisa any longer when her pain is particularly bad, or she says something a little too close to the rhetoric of the Cybermen. He hates himself for it.

“Always the big giveaway. Aliens have no sense of household hygiene,” Jack says, as if he's some paragon of self care. “Which reminds me. Gotta pee.” He swans off to the bathrooms.

Immediately, Tosh and Owen pounce on Gwen, while Ianto continues munching on his noodles and pretending not to be interested in the conversation.

“So what's he told you?” Owen: epitome of subtlety.

“About what?” Gwen asks, demonstrating that she will likely not be bringing a whole lot of intuition and intelligence to the team.

“Himself!” Tosh squeaks.

“You've been here longer than I have.”

“We were banking on you.”

“You're a copper,” Owen states. “You're trained to ask questions.”

“You don't know anything?”

“Not who he is, not where he's from. Nothing,” he scowls a little, and Ianto braces himself for what he knows is coming. “Except him being gay.”

“No, he's not!” Gwen says, taken aback, and it's far too obvious that she is putting a lot of stake in this answer. “Really, do you think?”

“Owen does,” Tosh says. “I don't.”

“And I don't care,” Ianto chimes in, although the tiny part of him that revels in Jack's attentions screams at him that he's a filthy liar. He's only a little surprised at how unbearably loud it has gotten lately.

“Period military is not the dress code of a straight man,” Owen says. As if he's any sort of expert on the matter. 

They continue speculating about their captain's sexuality and his aptitude in the dating scene - putting it delicately - until Gwen is distracted by the sound of Carys, the poor girl, sobbing in her cell. Jack returns from his break. Ianto can feel the heat from his arm as he sits back down beside him.

“What are we doing having Chinese while a girl fights for her life?”

“Actually,” Jack says, clearly gearing up for some kind of contrary speech. “While we've been eating, the computers have been running a full bio-scan on Carys - profiling her blood, metabolism, organs, skin, the works - so we can see what effect the alien's having on her. They've also been taking samples of the air in the cell so we can analyse and changes in the environment around her. Now, is that enough? Do you want more? ‘Cause it gets kinda boring.”

“You've been hidden down here too long. Spending so much time with the alien stuff, you've lost what it means to be human.” Ianto takes offense at this, considering his all-too-human reactions to Jack, and his own loyalties, and it goes on. He says nothing.

“So remind us,” Jack says. “Tell me what it means to be human in the twenty-first century.” He sounds sarcastic to Ianto, but Gwen seems to take his words at face value.

 

“All right,” she says.

\----

Carys is safe, home with her father and a head full of empty spaces where her memory of the last few days should be. Ianto is the one to retcon her - as it should be, if you ask him - and Jack doesn't tell Gwen. They let her believe that Carys will live out her days knowing the horrors of the universe and about the things that can harm her and her loved ones. Ianto wonders, not for the last time, why Gwen seems to think that this is such a horrible thing for them to do.

\----

The rift is quiet for a while, until the team - out on a call without Ianto as per usual - intercept a strange device from a petty crook that shows the user visions of the past. He's in the basement with Lisa, reading to her, when they pile in after searching for the man Gwen saw in her vision. He can hear them on the comms line - they always forget he is privy to all their conversations when the lines are open. It suits him quite well. He kisses Lisa goodbye with a promise to be back soon and hurries upstairs.

The team is crowded into Jack's office when he reaches the top level. He catches the last few words of Gwen’s sentence.

“... string of convictions: burglary, shoplifting, credit cards-”

“Do warn me if he's dropping in,” Ianto says, worried about the stock of the tourist office. It may be a front, but he prides himself on the immaculate handling of the place. After all, Jack personally asked him to keep it running if and when he has the time, and he's already disappointing Jack enough as it is, even if the captain is unaware. The team bickers over the alien artifact.

“This kid, Bernie. Where does he live?” Jack asks.

“Splott,” Tosh replies matter-of-factly.

“Splott?” Owen repeats.

“I believe estate agents pronounce it “Sploe”,” Ianto offers. The others look at him for the first time since he arrived, mostly with entertained disbelief. Ianto could swear there was an element of pride in Jack's eyes.

\----

Jack goes to find Ianto for the first time after a mission when Gwen stabs Ed in the street. Her distress at losing her first civilian has rubbed off on him, and he feels jittery, uncomfortable in his own skin, and oh so alone. He sent the team home prematurely, he now realises, finding himself unable to sit in his office with piles of paperwork without some kind of breakdown. It's when he's sitting with his head in his hands looking at the reports he has to fill out - “Unavoidable Termination of a Civilian” - that he remembers he didn't see Ianto leave.

Jack wanders the Hub looking for Ianto, finally finding him half-buried under stacks of documents and artifacts in the archives. He smiles, watching the unaware Welshman work for a moment, and not for the first time feels a rush of affection that runs deeper than that he has for the rest of his team. He shoves it down into the part of himself that he sections off in case he gets hurt.

“You work too hard,” he says, and Ianto starts, knocking over a pile of papers that are almost two feet high. “Oh, shit, sorry!”

“It's alright, sir,” Ianto says, scurrying about on his hands and knees to gather the papers. Jack bends down to help him.

“Personnel reports?” Jack asks, looking at a sheet for a woman he worked with twenty years ago. He feels nothing remembering her.

“Everything needs to be organised,” Ianto says. “This place was a shit hole, if you'll pardon the phrase. I don't even think they had a system for archiving; they just shoved everything where it fit.”

Jack at least has the decency to look sheepish. “I may or may not have been responsible for the bad filing in the last hundred or so years.”

Ianto looks up at him, a confused scowl on his face, and Jack belatedly remembers that he never told Ianto about his status as immortal. He finds he's not as worried about telling him as he probably should be.

But Ianto makes it even easier for him, trusting him implicitly and not responding with any of the usual “that can't be possible” or “don’t fuck with me”. Instead, he waits for an explanation.

“Something happened to me, almost a hundred and fifty years ago,” Jack says. “It made me incapable of dying - or, at least, staying dead.”

Ianto, mercifully, doesn't ask what happened. Instead he looks sad.

“That sounds lonely,” he says.

Jack is speechless. He studies Ianto's face, sees no pity, only understanding. It's a weight off his chest and Jack can only lean forward and press his lips against Ianto's. It's short, soft, and barely even a kiss by Jack's standards, but it feels like coming home in a way that terrifies him. Ianto responds in kind, but when they part he sits there with his eyes closed and mouth slightly open until he realises what happened and his eyes burst open and he bolts from the room, leaving Jack squatting on the dirty archive floor wondering exactly what the fuck happened.


End file.
